Connecticut’s ‘Starman,’ lights up the night with symbol of hope. Here’s why it’s worth a visit.
Since graduating from West Hartford’s Conard High in 1985, Christopher Owens has followed many passions.
He moved to California to study filmmaking. He opened a pizzeria in Mystic. He restored sailboats and a vintage fire truck. He lived in lighthouses, restored them and turned one into a B&B. He worked craft services on Hollywood movie sets and catered celebrity parties.
“I never graduated college. I just kept moving to the next thing,” he said. “I was like Peter Pan. I broke the hands off of the clocks and just lived.”
Now back in Connecticut, Owens, who lives in Chester, has taken on a new persona. Today, Owens is known to residents of that town as The Star Man.
“I made 10 stars and put them on the hillside behind my house. It made a big splash in the town. It got me to meeting a lot of my neighbors,” he said. “I went to the historical society later. They said, you’re the star man. Can you make some for a fundraiser? That’s what started the movement.”
Since then, Owens has made and sold hundreds of stars, most of them 3 1/2 feet wide by 3 1/2 feet deep, made of wood and wrapped with tiny lights. They sprung up on homes and businesses all over Chester and are spilling out to other nearby towns: Guilford, Madison, Old Saybrook, Essex, Westbrook.
“I just sold 40 of them yesterday. I can’t make them fast enough,” he said.
Stars for everyone
Owens said the stars are not necessarily a holiday decoration.
“They’re not a religious thing. They’re just stars. Everybody loves stars. They bring happiness. I like to create happiness,” Owens said.
“In the middle of all this, me making the stars, COVID hit. They became stars of hope,” he said. “People would drive around town to see the stars and it made people feel a sense of unity through this really scary time.”
The latest phase of Owen’s star project will come Dec. 2, with the debut of a “wishing booth” in Chester, next to Grano Arso restaurant at 6 Main St. The booth, modeled after a British phone box, will be decorated with stars and will welcome anyone who wants to enter to make a wish. Other stars will be mounted on buildings in the area.
The next day, Westerly, Rhode Island, will unveil its own Owens project, a tunnel made with huge versions of his stars. People visiting that city’s Wilcox Park can walk through the 14-foot-tall, 40-foot-long “Starry Lights” tunnel.
“That one really pushed me as an artist,” he said.
A roaming life
After high school, Owens enrolled in Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California, to learn how to make films. Then he set that aside and enrolled at New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vermont. He set that aside, too, but stayed with his passion for food, especially pizza.
“I used to work at Harry’s in West Hartford Center,” he said. “I figured pizza would give me a career so I can act grown up and make some money.”
He opened Pizzetta in Mystic. After a while, his sense of adventure returned. His longtime hobby of restoring sailboats resurfaced, this time in the form of a fire truck.
“I passed a fire station. There was a Pierce fire pumper truck, 30,000 pounds, for sale,” he said. “I told myself don’t stop. I did stop. I bought it. Then I asked myself, what the hell am I going to do with a fire truck?”
What he did was convert it to a mobile pizza restaurant. He called the pizza place Company 77. He loved his new food truck. Then the 2008 Great Recession hit. With business slower, he had time to think.
“I’m in New England, where I can use my truck just a few months out of the year until it gets cold. I need to go where it is warmer,” he said.
He headed back to California. Pizzetta is now run by his brother.
He got work in the Hollywood craft services industry, feeding casts and crews on movie sets. He did “Mad Men,” “Glee,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Grace and Frankie” and other TV shows and films.
“I did ‘Ad Astra.’ I made Brad Pitt a mac-and-cheese bacon pizza. He ate the whole thing and said to me, ‘Dude, that pizza was amazing’,” he said.
On the side, he catered celebrity functions. “It was a run. I had a lot of fun,” he said. In his spare time, he often took breaks to come back to New England, visit family and live in lighthouses, often restoring them.
Disaster
His footloose life changed when his mother was diagnosed with dementia. He came home, bought a house in Chester, brought her there and commuted to California once every two weeks. Soon he found out Company 77 was doomed.
“The state of California no longer allowed Detroit Diesel engines like the one in my truck. It wasn’t EPA certified. I had to convert it. That would have cost me $180,000,” he said. “I went bankrupt. I tried to get the truck into a museum but in the end it wound up in a scrap yard in Anaheim.”
He took this as a sign to commit himself to his mom. Sooner than expected, though, he had to get her into assisted living. “I thought we’d have a few years. We only had a few months,” he said. “That was a bleak time.”
With a lot of time between visits to his mother, he started thinking of art projects. And over time, he eventually found his way to his stars.
“I had done stars in the past. I did them in Vermont, in the Mad River Valley. I put in about 400 there,” he said. “I could do them here, too.”
Community impact
Dawn Parker of Chester Historical Society met Owens when he came in to the society’s historic mill for a look around. She realized he was the man who decorated the area around his home with stars.
“There were white lights everywhere. It was so pretty. I asked him, can we partner on our winter fund raising campaign,” Parker said.
“The fundraiser was called ‘Light up the Night.’ The point was to brighten up the dark night in town with these beautiful stars.” It lit up the society’s coffers, too, raising $14,000, she added.
Then the pandemic hit, and people brought out their stars again.
“They became a symbol of the town coming together. Then more people came to me and said, I never got a star. So Chris kept doing it, but he changed it to raise money to buy food cards for people in town that were struggling. He raised another $20,000,” she said. “Now people leave them up all the time.”
Mandy Carroll, of The Merchants of Chester, said Owens lit up 150 stars on storefronts during the First Friday event in December 2020.
“It was drizzly and about 34 degrees, a terrible freezing night. But hundreds of people came. He installed them from one end of the village to the other. He lit them all at once. People were cheering,” Carroll said.
A drone video of the installation is at visitchesterct.com/comeseestarrynights.
Owens loves his adopted town. “I made Chester my playground,” he said. Thayer Talbott of Middlesex County Community Foundation added, “This gentleman has a heart of gold and he adores our community.”
Owens said stars are popular because their appeal is universal.
“Looking up at the stars is something we all share. They give us hope,” he said. “The world is a wacky place now. We need that connection and hope.”
To buy stars from Owens, visit chestercottagect.com.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
